A mental health expert warns that fashionable advice to ignore your child’s tears may cause lifelong harm
Nanny no longer knows best, the Contented Little Baby Book could undermine a child’s development, and Dr Spock’s advice that a child should be left to cry could cause psychological damage.
When it comes to the crowded and hotly debated world of how best to bring up baby, there is a new theory that uses brain scans to argue that controlled crying not only damages babies’ brains but produces angry, anxious adults.
‘If you ignore a crying child, tell them to shut up or put them in a room on their own, you can cause serious damage to their brains on a level that can result in severe neurosis and emotional disorders later in life,’ said Professor Margot Sunderland, a leading expert in the development of children’s brains and a British Medical Association award-winning author, who has already written more than 20 books on child mental health.
Full story on the Guardian Website here:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1345420,00.html
Amelia Hill, education correspondent Sunday November 7, 2004 The Observer
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